At the event, held on the rooftop of Toronto’s Park Hyatt Hotel, Taoiseach spoke of the strong support from the Canadian travel industry in helping Ireland achieve record numbers of Canadian visitors so far this year.

At the luncheon, John Kirk, president and editor-in-chief of TravelPulse Canada, spoke 1-2-1 with Niall Gibbons, the CEO of Tourism Ireland, about Ireland’s record visitor numbers for 2016 and the significant growth in visitors so far in 2017.

“It’s been a great story from North America over the last number of years.” said Gibbons. “Last year we had a record year, in excess of 1.5m visitors. North America in general growing by about 13 per cent. The Canadian market… growing by 11 per cent. Over 200,000 Canadians. A record year.”

As far as air access, Gibbons referred to it as “unprecedented access”, saying “it’s never been easier and the value has never been better in terms of getting to Ireland” and pointing out that there are 20 gateways from North America to Ireland – five from Canada and fifteen from the US.

In the area of room capacity, there are in excess of 5,000 rooms currently under construction in Dublin with all expected to be online by 2020, while in Belfast, there are 1,400 rooms coming online in 2017 alone.

So far this year, Tourism Ireland has seen significant growth, planning for growth in excess of six per cent but seeing very strong growth of almost 21 per cent so far this year and Gibbons expects they’ll sustain much of that to the end of the year.

Comments

You may use your Facebook account to add a comment, subject to Facebook's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your Facebook information, including your name, photo & any other personal data you make public on Facebook will appear with your comment, and may be used on TravelPulse.com. Click here to learn more.